Recording and Exporting the Highest Quality
Getting the best possible video out of Screenflick, for professional work.
Screenflick records at high quality, and lets you export at whatever quality you need. For professional work, here's how to make sure nothing is lost on the way. Record at the highest quality your Mac can keep up with, and then export in a format that keeps it.
How do I record my Mac screen at the highest quality?
Choose "Ultra High" quality in Screenflick's preferences (or ProRes 4444 if you need it), leave Capture Scale at 100%, and turn on Capture Retina. Keep reading.
What should I export to for video editing?
Use the "ProRes" exporter. The file is very large, but it's the best format to edit with, and the audio stays uncompressed. Keep reading.
How do I get the best quality in a finished movie?
Export with H.264 or HEVC at High quality with multipass turned on, at the recording's full size and frame rate. Keep reading.
Recording
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To record at the highest quality
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In Screenflick's preferences, click on "Quality" and choose "Standard (Screenflick Custom)" as the Video Encoder with "Ultra High" quality. This looks just like your screen, and uses far less disk space than ProRes.
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If you need ProRes for your workflow, choose "Pixel-Perfect (ProRes 4444)" instead. The files are very large, so make sure you have the disk space, and a Mac that can encode ProRes in hardware to keep the frame rate up.
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When you select the recording area, leave "Capture Scale" at 100% and turn on "Capture Retina", so the recording has every pixel your screen does.
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Choose the capture rate you'll want in the end. 60 fps is the best your display will give you, but only if your Mac can keep up. See
Getting the Highest Recording Frame Rate.
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To keep the audio fully lossless, turn on "Record lossless audio" in the Quality preferences. It uses Apple Lossless instead of high quality AAC.
System audio and the microphone are recorded in separate stereo tracks, so you can export them separately and mix them in your editor.
Exporting
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Everything you do when you export decides how much of that quality you keep.
- For an editor like Final Cut or Premiere, use the "ProRes" exporter. The video file will be very large, but it's the best format to edit with. The audio in the movie is all exported as uncompressed linear PCM to preserve the full quality.
- For a final movie, use H.264 or HEVC with High quality and multipass turned on, with AAC Stereo at 44.1KHz 128 kbps for the audio. On macOS 13 and later, HEVC can also export at a constant quality.
- Export at the recording's full size and frame rate, and don't scale it down, unless the movie really needs to be smaller.
Click on "Quick Test" to export a short section of the recording with your settings, so you can check the quality before exporting the whole thing. When you have settings you like, choose "Save as Preset…" from the Preset menu to use them again.
Because Screenflick records at full quality, you can always export again with different settings. See Recording Quality, Exporting Movies, and Video and Audio Export Settings.
